Life
Birth and Early Years Born 'Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy '''on January 5, 1900, to a navy captain of Breton descent in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, France. Early Years After Yves' father died in 1908, his mother moved to her native Locronan, Finistère, so he and his brother were shipped from relative to relative throughout Paris during their childhood, seeing their mother for their vacations. Yves' brother would eventually die while serving in WWI. Yves met Pierre Matisse, son of Henri Matisse, and became friends with him growing up. Pierre would become an art dealer while Yves was pressured into joining the Merchant Navy in 1918 by family. He was then drafted into the military in 1920 and sent to Tunis where he met poet Jacques Prévert. After his service, Tanguy moved to Paris with his friends. It wasn't until after 1922 before Tanguy decided to become an artist... Art Beginnings In 1923 Tanguy had been working odd jobs until he came across a painting by Giorgio de Chirico and it moved him so greatly, he resolved himself to become a painter. Tanguy had no formal training, but he jumped headlong into his work. Through his friends, especially Prévert, Tanguy was introduced to artist André Breton, who invited him into the Surrealist circle in 1925. By 1926, Tanguy would get his work into the magazine ''La Révolution surréaliste. From there Tanguy gained his first solo show within a year later in 1927. Tanguy was married to his first wife, Jeannette Ducrocq, later that year and his work flourished as he produced one of his most well-known paintings, Mama, Papa is Wounded! (1927). Breton would go on to contract Tanguy to make 12 paintings for a year, but he would only complete 8. Pre-United States Life By 1930, Tanguy was receiving shows with other Surrealist painters. His art style changed for a bit while he was traveling Africa from 1930-31. In 1930 some of his work was destroyed by protestors during a screening of Luis Buñuel Portolés' and Salvador Dali's film, L'Age d'Or. Tanguy was receiving both solo and group Surrealist shows in New York, Brussels, Paris, and London throughout the 1930's, despite living a fairly poor, bohemian lifestyle. His New York show was significant in that his future 2nd wife, Kay Sage, saw the show and became determined to meet him after viewing his piece I am Waiting for You (1934). Eventually, in 1938, Tanguy put up a show in Peggy Guggenheim's museum in London that made him wealthy for the first time. Not only that, but Tanguy began an affair with Guggenheim which lasted until he met Sage in 1939. His meeting with Sage happened during the Surindépendants exhibit where Sage, Tanguy, and other Surrealists had a show. Tanguy went to the opening with Breton and poet Nicolas Calas. They were so impressed by Sage's work that they set to meet her, thinking she was a male artist. Tanguy and Sage fell in love immediately. Later that year Sage moved back to the United States with Tanguy following her there. They married in 1940. United States Life and Death Upon moving to the United State to avoid the Nazi occupation of France, Tanguy and Sage settle down in New York initially. They travel to Reno, Nevada where they marry in 1940 and then settle down in Woodbury, Connecticut on a farm converted into an art studio. By 1942, Tanguy is represented in Matisse's Artists in Exile exhibition, featuring European artists now living in the United States due to WWII. While living in the United States, Tanguy amasses a gun collection and takes frequent trips to Arizona and other Western states which seem to have influenced his work by bringing in brighter colors and changing his rocky formations into more organic forms and softer objects. He becomes a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1948 and started to sketch his paintings out beforehand when he used to just paint them on the spot. This enraged Breton on top of the fame and fortune Tanguy and Sage were receiving. He would later denounce and throw them out of the Surrealist group as he had done to Max Ernst and his wife, Dorothea Tanning, prior. Breton would also try to get Tanguy's best friend, Pierre Matisse to disassociate himself from Tanguy, which only created an animosity between Breton and Tanguy until their deaths. Tanguy and Sage would spend much of their time with Ernst and Tanning while working in the US, and in 1953 Tanguy returned to Europe for the first time since 1939 for a show of his work in Rome, Milan, and Paris. In 1954, Tanguy and Sage were given a joint show in Connecticut where they requested their work be shown in separate galleries to emphasize that each artist was independent. This was important for them, as many viewed Sage's career in conjunction with Tanguy's due to their similarities in style, which is a common theme for married artists throughout history, like the de Koonings or Isabelle and John Bloom. Tanguy would then die on January 15, 1955, ten days after his 55th birthday from a cerebral hemorrhage. Tanguy would receive his first major retrospective by September that year at the MOMA. Sage lived until 1963, where she took her own life after exclaiming in a letter that Tanguy had been waiting for her for the second time in his life and it was time for her to meet him again. Both were cremated and their ashes spread together in Brittany per Tanguy's request by Matisse. Go back to the homepage